Evidence-Based Practice Short Courses

The Monash Institute of Health Services Research offer the following 3 short courses via distance education.  These courses are flexible allowing you to commence study at any time.  You are given four months to complete a short course.  It is estimated that approximately 10 to 12 hours a week would need to be set aside to complete required reading, completion of activities and and assessment tasks.

Introduction to Evidence-Based Practice (short course)
The unit aims to provide students with a set of evidence-based tools relating to diagnosis, prognosis, therapy and harm. Students will learn to formulate clinical questions so that they can be answered, to search for information, to critically appraise the evidence for validity and clinical importance, and apply the evidence in clinical practice.

• On completion of this short course you will have developed the ability to:
• Appropriately formulate answerable clinical questions.
• Search the scientific literature for information addressing these questions.
• Critically appraise the quality of the scientific literature.
• Apply the results from research studies to inform clinical practice.

Systematic Review of the Evidence for Treatment Interventions (short course)
This unit requires skills learned in the previous units of the Graduate Certificate in Evidence-Based Practice, including the formulation of appropriate questions, searching the literature, critical appraisal, and interpretation and application of research. This unit will teach students how to write a protocol for a systematic review of treatment interventions.  Students will develop a protocol of a systematic review based upon the methodology developed by the Cochrane Collaboration, which may be eligible for submission to a Cochrane Review Group for publication at the end of the course.

• On completion of this short course you will have developed the ability to:
• Understand the need for, and principles of, systematic reviews of treatment interventions.
• Define clinical questions appropriate for addressing with a systematic review of treatment interventions.
• Apply skills in searching the scientific literature to identify relevant randomised controlled trials.
• Formulate appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria for selecting studies in systematic reviews of treatment interventions.
• Describe the factors likely to bias the results of research studies and critically appraise the quality of randomised controlled trials.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the statistical methods used to summarise and combine the results of randomised controlled trials
• Demonstrate competence in interpreting systematic reviews of the evidence for treatment interventions.

Implementation of the Evidence (short course
Systematic reviews of the literature are becoming increasingly available and many clinical specialties are publishing evidence-based clinical guidelines, position statements and recommendations based on the available evidence. The skills needed to source, appraise and integrate this evidence into practice are provided through this unit.

• On completion of this short course you will have developed the ability to:
• Critically appraise a systematic review of treatment interventions.
• Critically appraise an evidence-based clinical guideline.
• Discuss the clinical utility of systematic reviews and clinical guidelines.
• Describe the key principles of implementation of evidence into clinical practice.
• Explain the barriers to changing practice.
• Develop an implementation plan for change in one’s own clinical setting.